One of the great races in U.S. industrial history ended last week. Both Firestone Tire and U.S. Rubber began to turn out synthetic rubberthe first produced under the Government's original 1,000,000-ton program. Who won the race nobody knows. Firestone claimed that its Baton Rouge, La. plant (capacity, 30,000 tons using petroleum-butadiene) had produced the fat, brownish synthetic rubber "loaves" 24 hours before its rival. U.S. Rubber claimed the pennant for its plant at Institute, W. Va., largest single unit in the world (capacity, 90,000 tons using alcohol-butadiene). Experts hinted that the U.S. Rubber plant was more complete, had...
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